Trump Schedules Call With Putin Over Siberia Plague Scare
The president said he will speak with Vladimir Putin “very soon” about the lab worker’s death, and the U.S. sent Moscow a confidential warning demanding transparency.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin “very soon” to discuss the death of a lab worker at a plague research institute in Siberia.
“I have a call scheduled very soon,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. Asked what U.S. intelligence agencies were telling him, he said: “So far we are in very deep discussions. We will be able to report about it probably tomorrow.”
The call would be the first direct contact between the two leaders about the scare. It comes as Washington turns up the pressure on Moscow. The State Department sent Russia a confidential diplomatic communication known as a démarche, warning that withholding details runs against international health obligations, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the information Russia had shared was “still quite limited.” He urged Moscow to “share more information with the world,” and said speculating about what happened would be reckless given the gaps.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow told American citizens in Russia on Tuesday to “depart immediately,” citing press reports of suspected pneumonic plague and hospital closures in Irkutsk. The embassy said its ability to help Americans outside Moscow was limited.
The scare centers on Daria Shipilova, 28, a lab technician at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute. She died on Friday after reportedly breaking a test tube containing a deadly pathogen. Russian officials said her death was caused by “pneumonia of unknown aetiology.”
The World Health Organization said Russian authorities told it no case of plague had recently been registered in the Irkutsk region. The woman’s contacts were identified, tested and placed under medical observation, WHO said, and no high-threat pathogens were found among them. The agency said the public health risk to the general population “appears to be low.”
Local media reported 60 workers at the institute were in quarantine and several hospitals were under restrictions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred questions on Tuesday to Russia’s health watchdog. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan put quarantine controls in place at border crossings.
Trump offered Monday to help Russia respond. “It’s a rough disease,” he said. “Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we’re always willing to help.”
The scare follows Deniro News’ earlier report on Shipilova’s death and the cover-up claims.
